


they're singing hallelujah when defeating your heart

by jonphaedrus



Series: intervention [1]
Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Elantris - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Multi, Non-Canonical Ending, Polyamory, Pregnancy, im pretty sure bsands would probably be fifteen kinds of ashamed of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 23:39:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5645995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I have no country to return to,” Hrathen whispered. “I have no people, no King. Jaddeth knows, perhaps now no God, either. I am a dead man outside the walls of this palace, my armour atop an empty tomb, and there it must stay or they will drag me in chains before Wyrn so he may mete his judgment. Princess, I have nought to do but protect you.”</p><p>It was spontaneous. Stupid. Impetuous. It rose over her like a great wave, his affection and trust, gained from a man who seemingly had none left to give, who had broken and reforged as the surest steel.</p><p>Sarene kissed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they're singing hallelujah when defeating your heart

**Author's Note:**

> the solution to all problems is always an ot3 "but noah" you say "this wasnt even a problem" IM NOT CRYING YOURE CRYING ALL BRANDON HAD TO DO WAS MENTION THE WHOLE HRATHEN HAD A CRUSH THING AND IW AS GONE, BYE,
> 
> title is from "intervention" by arcade fire which is the most hrathen song ive ever heard

“Idos Domi,” Raoden whispered, as he crouched next to Hrathen’s collapsed form, Sarene hovering over his shoulder. “He’s _alive_.” The Gyorn’s hair was plastered to his face with sweat and his skin had taken on a frightening tinge, but as Sarene leaned over, pressing her fingers to the man’s pulse, she took in a sharp breath.

He _was_ alive. Barely, his pulse fluttering and his breath weak, but alive. Her fingers came back stained with his blood, and Raoden awkwardly lifted him up. “Help me get his feet.” 

“How are we going to get him back?” She asked her husband, grimacing past the screaming pain in her injured shoulder, panting with the effort of lifting Hrathen when she was already exhausted. Resolutely, Sarene did not look at the fallen Dakhor as she helped Raoden start moving the Gyorn. He was surprisingly heavy.

“Not sure,” Raoden replied, equally out of breath. “But we can’t leave him here like this.” Perhaps a day before, Sarene might not have agreed with him, but despite the ache of her abused body and her hammering pulse, she knew he was right.

She and Hrathen had come into this together. She would go back out with him, or not at all.

 

 

They still held the funeral for him. If he survived—which seemed unlikely, as he had not yet woken even with Raoden’s near-constant care—it would be best for him to be dead to the rest of the world. Sarene was frightened to think what might happen if more Dakhor monks were sent after Hrathen, so it was best for everyone outside of the few who knew he lived to think otherwise.

“Raoden, kayana, this seems like a bad idea,” Galladon said, one evening as Raoden pored over Hrathen’s prone body while Sarene handed him books turned to precise pages. “If he wakes up, what will you do with him, kolo?” 

“Let’s get him to wake up first,” Raoden replied. He had tied back his silver hair while he worked, and despite his broad hands he was surprisingly gentle with the collapsed Derethi, not sparing any energy in making sure he didn’t harm Hrathen more. Since he had collapsed he had recovered colour and from his blood loss, and Raoden had managed to get whatever poison he had been shot with out of his system, but Hrathen still didn’t wake.

Someone always stayed with the Gyorn, in case he awoke, and that afternoon it was Sarene’s turn. She took advantage of the time to read and dictate notes for rebuilding Arelon to Ashe, who dutifully then relayed specific instructions to the recovering nobility.

When her Seon had left, Sarene reached out and took one of Hrathen’s still, cool hands in her own.

“Wake up,” she whispered. “Oh, Domi, wake up soon.”

Whatever fear or hate she had felt for the man before, it had evaporated when he had saved her in Teod, when she had seen the trauma dealt on his soul by Dilaf’s betrayal, the terror he felt toward the scattering of all he believed in. By the fact he had almost died for her—three times.

He had so many answers for them, answers only he could pass on. He was the closest thing they had to a solution to their problems and there he lay, unable to even open his eyes.

 

 

When Hrathen awoke, it was slow. “He’s stirring, I think,” Raoden said one day. A few day later, Hrathen’s eyes began to move under their closed lids. A few days after that, his breathing deepened, no longer shallow. He began to move slightly in his sleep.

A week later, he opened his eyes for the first time, to find both Raoden and Sarene peering over him, the tops of their heads crammed together over his face. Hrathen coughed, taking a few sharp, short breaths, his dark eyes unfocused as he looked around wildly before he finally found Sarene’s face.

“Princess?” Hrathen whispered, choking on the word, the whisper barely making it past his mouth, and Sarene smiled, genuinely.

“Welcome back.” 

He closed his eyes, a bubble of laughter escaping his lips. He said something in Fjordell that Sarene didn’t understand, and was gone again, asleep once more as soon as he’d woken. Raoden’s silver skin wrinkled as he furrowed his brow, and he frowned at Hrathen’s still form.

“Well, that was decidedly undramatic. I was expecting him to rise crying Jaddeth had healed him.” he commented at last, and Sarene snorted.

“I think the arrow to the chest may have finally put an end to any overdramatic displays of absurdity.” She hoped, anyway.

There had been something awful, swaying inside her when Hrathen had collapsed in the street, his dark eyes gone wide and his face truly, deeply _frightened_. It had been a terrifying expression on the face of a man who was always in control, and it hadn’t left her any time since.

Hrathen slept, but this time, with the promise of getting well.

 

 

Two weeks later, he was finally well enough to sit up in bed, his greying dark hair grown back in to the length it was when Sarene had met him, still close-cropped but clinging to his angular face. “Please,” he said, his voice low and tired, clearly speaking with great deliberation. “Tell me what has happened.”

In response, Sarene and Raoden took turns describing the aftermath of the battle with the Dakhor, the restoration of Elantris and Raoden’s power as king, the restructuring of Arelon, the marriage, the funerals, the pyres. Through it all, Hrathen sat with his proud head hung, until the telling was done, and then he slowly folded his hands and pressed his face into them, his shoulders uncharacteristically hunched.

“I have failed,” Hrathen said at last, his voice cracking. He scrubbed at his eyes with his fingers. “I have failed, I have failed you all.” 

“No,” Sarene whispered, reaching out, setting one hand on his shoulder. “Without you, Raoden and I would both be dead, and Teod and Arelon fallen. _You_ saved us.” Hrathen shook his head, breathed, unsteady.

“You...you. Wyrn sent me to Arelon with a deadline,” he managed at last, finding his composure again. He sat awkwardly, still favouring his side and arm despite all of Raoden’s healing. “I was meant to convert Arelon in three months, or Fjorden would begin a holy war.” His voice cracked on the second to last word. “I see now, after Dilaf and the Dakhor, that the deadline was meant to be naught but a distraction. However, with them now dead, that leaves Wyrn only in a more precarious position.” He looked up at Raoden. “Raoden, you must prepare for war. There is no way Wyrn is not coming.”

“Go back to the start,” Raoden urged. “To the beginning. ‘Ene might have some idea of what you’re talking about, but I’ve been in Elantris for months.” He glanced to his wife, whose grey eyes were thoughtful. “Hrathen, you’re the only answers we have.”

The Gyorn took a shaking breath, and slowly, laboriously, began the process of unfolding all that had happened, step by step, from his actions in Duladel up until his fight to kill Dilaf, including what he could tell them of Dakhor, although it clearly pained the man deeply to do so. At the end of his tale, Sarene stood up and slowly began pacing, tapping her cheek as she thought.

“Given what’s at hand, his plans have been thrown into chaos,” the Queen began, her thoughts spiralling out as the two men watched. “With much of the Dakhor lost, and the Gradget dead, he loses the only fighting force he had that could stand against Elantris. Even if he rushes, we’re going to have at _least_ a few months before he’s ready to attack again, which gives us some time to plan. We also have Elantris, which he didn’t bargain in to begin with. _And_ with the restoration of relations between Teod and Arelon, we have an actual navy as well as diplomatic relations to the North. We _can_ stand up against him if he throws himself on our borders, although it will be difficult, and we doubtless cannot do it for long.” She paused, and then looked at Hrathen, who was watching her with sombre dark eyes. “We also have you. If you decide to stay.”

“All the more reason for Wyrn to crush you,” the Gyorn countered, and for a moment, Sarene felt a touch of their old sparring and the pleasure of victory touch her, although in his state, it fell away fast. “A Gyorn turning sides is unheard of. He will want me dead.” 

Sarene’s eyes lit up. Hrathen hesitated, looking askance at her. After two months of sparring and duelling, he did not trust well in that expression.

“Ah, and there is the fact we forgot to tell you.” Sarene spread her hands wide, finally revealing her plan. “Yours was one of the funerals we gave. At first, it was unclear if you were going to survive, so I hope you’ll forgive any presumptions on our part. We thought that if you _did_ wake, better to do it without having anybody breathing down your neck, or ours.”

Hrathen stared at her, his dark eyes very wide, his mouth part-open. He didn’t seem to know what to say, until he at last closed his mouth. Swallowed.

“So outside of this room...” 

“All but our Seons, and a few trusted friends, think you dead. Hrathen...” Sarene trailed off, and frowned. “You deserve a fresh start. You turned on your friends, your countrymen, your _superiors_ , your God, to save me, to save our countries. You have walked through fire and come out braver for it. Of any man, you have earned a chance to start over.” 

The Gyorn—perhaps, not a Gyorn any more—stared at her with his wide eyes, until he made a sound that shocked her, halfway to a sob, and bent his head, taking one of her hands in both of his, pressing his forehead against it.

“My Princess,” Hrathen whispered, deep voice cracking, “You and your mind are both a cruel and a kind mistress.” Without knowing what she was doing, Sarene reached out and stroked his hair back from his face.

“You’ve done no wrong, Hrathen,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t have to go back there to face hell come to life if there’s nothing for you to return to.”

He said nothing, just remained like that, until he finally let her go, lay down, and fell back asleep.

 

 

Hrathen recovered slowly. “It’s less about his wounds,” Raoden told her, one evening as they watched the man take his first slow steps about, leaning on a wall in the Elantris palace, “More about his mind, I think. Everything that happened had a profound affect on him.” Raoden wasn’t wrong, of course. Hrathen was a changed man, and not all of it for the better. “He has to find a new place for himself in life.” 

“He will, given time,” Sarene replied, groaning at the weight of her growing pregnant belly as she finished fixing Raoden’s long hair for him. “You need to learn to take care of this yourself or cut it.” He hid a smile in his cheek as she groused. “Hrathen has survived too much to not survive finding a new life now.” 

She was right, of course.

 

 

Six months into Sarene’s pregnancy, the first assassins came. They never even reached the royal chamber, because as she and Raoden stumbled out still wrapped in bedclothes, they found Hrathen drenched in sweat and blood and panting over five corpses, his non-Dakhor arm broken at an unnatural angle. He looked up at them, pale from the exertion, and gestured breathlessly at the corpses. 

“Wyrn,” he said, and that got across all of it.

“What a mess,” Sarene finally managed, shaking her head. He had done it all mostly without weapons, but the assassins had come armed, and there was no getting away from the blood.

“I’ll call for some servants,” she told Raoden, touching her husband’s arm gently. “Hrathen,” Sarene murmured, and waddled off to find someone to help clean up, Ashe lighting the way for her. 

When she returned with servants, as they began cleaning up the mess, Sarene went back to their bedroom and found Raoden crouched on the floor next to the bed, Hrathen sitting with his back propped against the mattress, head turned upward, eyes half closed as Raoden carefully drew Aons to repair the damage done to his arm and his still-healing chest and side.

“People really have a thing for your ribs,” Raoden said, as Sarene came over to sit on the mattress next to them, and Hrathen laughed, pained, at the King’s ministrations. “How did you even manage to break half of these?”

“Out of shape,” Hrathen replied, not opening his eyes. “Out of practice, and still not recovered. I’m growing rusty in old age.” 

“Forty-three isn’t that old,” Sarene pointed out, and Hrathen grunted. She found herself stroking his dark, sweat-soaked hair back from his face, trying to soothe the pain she found there while Raoden healed the physical source of it. His hair had grown in longer than he ever kept it as Gyorn, down almost to his eyebrows, and it was loose and mussed from sleep, silver threading in all through his bangs from where it winged at his temples. “You’ll be perfectly fine when Raoden is done with you.”

“I am just glad I got to them before they got to you,” Hrathen said, at last. “I have not come so far from Jaddeth simply to have you two die in your sleep.” Sarene’s fingers hesitated on his forehead, and she made a quiet pained noise. 

“You don’t have to protect us forever,” she whispered, and Raoden looked up, his brow furrowed at the anguish in her voice. “You aren’t beholden to us, Hrathen.” How long ago had she wanted this man gone from her life forever, but now the thought of him remaining against her will pressed on a bruise inside her without Sarene even realising it was there. 

Hrathen opened his eyes at last and looked at her, and for the first time Sarene could see it writ all across his face plain as day—affection, devotion, _love_ , maybe even.

“I have no country to return to,” Hrathen whispered. “I have no people, no King. Jaddeth knows, perhaps now no God, either. I am a dead man outside the walls of this palace, my armour atop an empty tomb, and there it must stay or they will drag me in chains before Wyrn so he may mete his judgment. Princess, I have nought to do _but_ protect you.”

It was spontaneous. Stupid. Impetuous. It rose over her like a great wave, his affection and trust, gained from a man who seemingly had none left to give, who had broken and reforged as the surest steel.

Sarene kissed him.

 

 

For days, she did not speak of it with either Raoden or Hrathen. She was growing toward the end of her pregnancy, and it was making her irritable. However, eventually, Raoden cornered her in his study and pushed her to sit.

“Why did you kiss him?” Raoden asked.

“What, are you angry?”

“No,” her husband replied, leaning against the desk. “Not really, actually. More...curious.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. Even an Elantrian’s skin couldn’t hide how tired he was from rebuilding the country. “Why Hrathen?”

“I...” Sarene sighed, and waved a hand. “Pregnancy, who knows.”

“Leky Stick, that’s a bad lie if you’ve ever told one.” Sarene contemplated kicking him, but didn’t. She just sighed.

“He looked at me, Raoden. He looked at me like he had fallen too far from his god and instead of coming back to find Jaddeth before him, he found me. I couldn’t _not_ kiss him.”

Raoden nodded, staring straight ahead, thoughtful. 

“Do you want him?” Sarene choked on her own spit.

“I—“ she sputtered. “No? Maybe? Not like you, not _now—_ “

“I would be willing to give it a try,” Raoden added, and if she hadn’t been choking before, Sarene was now. “Look, ‘Ene. After all this, what’s one more thing?” His white eyebrows arched, and she found her bluster blowing away.

“After the baby’s born,” Sarene settled on, at last. “Then we talk to him.”

 

 

By the time their baby son came into the world, Hrathen had become a part of the family, so to speak. He was venturing out of the palace a bit more all the time. He was still imposing, thoughtful, and powerful—but he was no longer Gyorn, and without his red armour, few people recognised him. A year hadn’t aged him significantly, but it had changed him in other ways, and at Sarene’s request he joined with Father Omin in blessing her son, the Korathi priest deeply pleased at seeing something of his lost religion return to the Gyorn.

It had been an incredible source of amusement to Sarene, that outside of the small circle he travelled in company with Sarene and Raoden, his first close friend was Omin.

Sarene and Raoden had gone ten rounds on the baby name before settling on Roial, and some weeks after the baby was born, she rocked him to sleep and handed him off to his nurse.

“Come get me if he wakes,” Sarene whispered, still aching and sore after birth. “I’ll be in the King’s study.” The woman nodded, and Sarene went slowly to Raoden’s office.

When she got there, she found her husband not alone—Hrathen was sitting in the extra chair, leaned over the desk, a pen clutched in his fingers as he helped Raoden parse some of their limited Fjorden intelligence. Both men looked up when she entered, and Raoden scooted back immediately, coming over to greet her with a kiss. 

“Is he asleep?” Raoden asked, and Sarene groaned.

“Thank Domi, yes, _finally_ he sleeps! Nobody told me this would happen.” Hrathen was smiling at her over Raoden’s shoulder, his thin lips gentling his sharp face, the lines beside his dark eyes wrinkling, and he shook his head.

“Princess,” he rarely called her Sarene, “Only you would come out of giving birth complaining not about your own sleep, or about how little your baby sleeps, but about _getting_ him to sleep.”

“Hrathen, have you ever tried to get _anything_ done while rocking an infant to sleep? Not only do they drool everywhere, but even just turning the page of a book is enough to disrupt them.”

Hrathen looked thoughtful, and finally acquiesced, “Truthfully, I have never tried. You are not one to be kept from work for so long, so I can see why it pains you so.” After he finished saying it, he looked between Sarene and Raoden, and hesitated. “Raoden, I have taken too much of your time. I will leave you now.” He was invaluable, essential to stopping Wyrn taking Arelon and Teod, so he was playing his part too low, although that was not why Sarene looked to Raoden.

He cocked an eyebrow. 

She nodded, and then pressed herself back against the door, throwing the bolt. 

Hrathen froze.

“Princess—“

“Hrathen,” Sarene said, voice imperious as cold steel, “Are you in love with me?” 

Hrathen looked like he was about to bolt. Sarene didn’t move, although she saw him glance to the window—but they were four stories up, and he couldn’t make that jump easily.

“I,” Hrathen began, his accent thick on the single word, and he sighed. “Yes.” Sarene, pleased by his answer, nodded.

“Since Teod, yes?”

“Yes,” he admitted, and it clearly pained him to do so. Sarene perhaps enjoyed making him squirm more than he ought to, after all the times he had pinned her, but didn’t let it go. “May I go?”

“No,” Sarene replied, and he stopped again. “Raoden and I want to try.” Hrathen paled, and looked between them, all of his stature gone out of him while he was trapped by both of them. “If you want to try.”

“Sarene,” Hrathen said, “I am a _priest_.”

“You _were_ a priest,” Sarene countered. “Last I checked, you were Arelon’s Spymaster.” He’d never been named as such, although it was true. “Hrathen, you can’t hang onto your dead life forever. You can’t spend the rest of your days looking back instead of forward.” Her voice softened. “You’ve saved my life more times than I truly know how to count. You are a good man, Hrathen, and occasionally even a kind one. I wouldn’t offer this if I wasn’t sure.” Hrathen looked at her, his throat bobbing, and then at Raoden. 

“And you?”

Raoden shrugged. 

“At this point in my life, I’m ready to try just about anything new.” Hrathen hesitated.

“I have never been attracted to men.”

“I haven’t either, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try.” Raoden sighed. “Hrathen, Sarene’s right. If you’re saying no because you don’t think you’re deserving—“ 

“No!” Hrathen’s voice raised in pitch, cracking. “No. No—I am saying no because—“ he stumbled off into angry Fjordell before he got his voice back. “Because I don’t deserve Sarene, yes, because you’re married, yes, because I am a priest, yes, because so many things because—!”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by Sarene taking a few steps forward and grabbing Hrathen by the cheeks and kissing him, his warm dry mouth on hers, the softness of his lips _right_ against her own. Hrathen was hardly all that much taller than she was, although far broader, and for a long moment he stilled and she thought he might pull away, but then he softened, his shoulders slumping, one hand hesitant against her shoulder.

“This will not work,” Hrathen whispered, and Sarene snorted through her nose.

“Yes, well, I don’t think that any of us has ever done well with those words.” Raoden laughed behind her, and Sarene held out a hand to him, the King coming over and wrapping one broad hand around the back of Hrathen’s neck, pulling the older man down and kissing him, the surprised noise that the man made going straight to Sarene’s toes.

“Jaddeth help me,” Hrathen whispered, his expression open and unreadable. “You Arelish will be the death of me yet.”

  

 

For weeks, they circled. For almost two months, they went in, came out. Sarene recovered from giving birth, and Hrathen opened up slowly, like he was terrified if he gave more to them than they wanted, he would be thrown to the wolves.

One afternoon, while Sarene was relaying a rapid-fire string of instructions to Raoden as she paced, her husband’s wary expression matching the speed with which he wrote, she turned in her walking and caught sight of Hrathen, in the other room.

In his arms, balanced against his shoulder, was Roial, her son deeply asleep. Hrathen walked steadily with him, one hand holding the infant up while he read intelligence reports with the other, his red shirt now with drool all over one side, and Sarene hesitated, gaining Raoden’s attention as he looked up, peering around her out the door.

It spiked something in her, primal and desperate. Hrathen, Gyorn Hrathen, Hrathen who had thrown her into Elantris, who had tried to destroy her father and both her kingdoms, Hrathen who had almost died on the Teoin docks, Hrathen of the great preaching and fire and brimstome, holding her infant son like he was the most precious thing in the entire world, like if Hrathen breathed wrong he would shatter the calm of the sleeping infant and lose something whole and holy.

As she listened, in the dead silence, Sarene realised he was _singing_ , his voice pitched low as he murmured in Fjordell, rocking Roial back and forth. He was singing, singing to her son, with all the love and affection in the world.

She wanted him. She _wanted_ this man, who had done so much good and so much evil.

“’Ene?” Raoden whispered, and Sarene pressed her fingers against the back of his neck.

“Tonight,” she replied, and when she looked at him, she saw the understanding on his face.

“Tonight,” he agreed.

Tonight.

 

 

 After the baby was put to sleep and the palace had quieted down, Sarene stole on silent feet through the halls to Hrathen’s rooms and knocked gently on the door.

It opened moments later to the older man, shirtless, sweat on his chest from exertion. He had been slowly regaining his former physique, taking it carefully, never overworking his body, and he raised one dark eyebrow at her as he wiped his face with a damp cloth. 

“Ah—“ Sarene began, glancing up at his eyes and then back down at his neck, which was just below her eye level and glistening with sweat. She swallowed. “Oh,” she cursed, and grabbed his hand. “Just come on.” 

Hrathen, wisely, didn’t try and stop her, just closed his door quietly and followed, just as quiet as they wound back to Sarene and Raoden’s bedchambers. She hustled the former Gyorn inside and closed the doors, then threw the bolt so it was only the three of them in the Elantris half-light, dimmed by Raoden earlier for sleep.

“What,” Hrathen began, and then Sarene had his face in his hands and was pulling him down to kiss him, kiss him desperately, one hand sliding to cup the back of his neck, and he made a broken off noise in the back of his throat when she did it, his hands steadied on her shoulders. He had been afraid to touch her at first, but not any more, and after a moment Sarene pulled away, out of breath, her cheeks burning.

“Come to bed,” Sarene whispered, and Hrathen swallowed audibly, glanced between her and Raoden, who nodded.

“Princess, Raoden, I hardly think—“

“I am going to take all my clothes off right here on the floor if you do not get in that bed,” Sarene threatened, and Hrathen moved, nearly tripping over his feet as he got to the edge of the mattress where this had all began, only to be met by Raoden, who stood up to meet him, tangling his broad fingers into Hrathen’s short dark hair, pulled him in to kiss.

Sarene watched, breathless and wanting, as she slid onto the bed and waited on the two men, watched as Raoden drank Hrathen in like air until the older man broke away, panting, and sank down to the bed, awkward between them.

“I’ve never been with anyone,” he murmured, and Sarene stroked her fingers through his hair, over the silver strands. 

“We’ll show you.” She whispered, pressing her face into his hair, damp with sweat. 

They did.

They showed him where to touch and be touched, and when Sarene finally slipped her shift and crawled into his lap, her breasts still full and soft from her pregnancy Hrathen gave her that look all over again, like he had seen the light and she was it, his calloused hands overly gentle on her skin, reverent. They showed him where to place a mouth, where to suck, and it was only after Raoden had pressed Hrathen into the sheets and pressed his mouth against the ache between the older man’s legs and sucked him slick and near to tears that Sarene did what she had wanted all along and straddled him, slid down so his cock was hard and wet inside her, filling her wide, his voice rough and harsh in Fjordell but his eyes reverent, rapturous.

Curled between them, Hrathen came apart, Raoden’s cock hard and sliding against the small of Hrathen’s back, his silver hands broad on the older man’s waist, his breath dizzying and gasping. Sarene rode Hrathen’s cock, moaning unabashedly—so much thicker, Idos Domi, than Raoden’s, not as long but _thicker_ and it peeled her apart in all the right ways—without a hand between her legs because she wanted this to last, until Hrathen was shaking, pleading with some of the few Fjordell words she knew, and Sarene pulled off him before he came, instead stroking him off and watched as Hrathen’s last walls came crumbling down and he spilled hot over her fingers.

He came crying her name, tears a the edges of his eyes, begging and calling her _my princess_ and nothing had ever been like this, nothing ever, and when he was done, shaking and sated, she let Raoden fuck himself to completion inside her, moaning desperately as she held on with one hand tangled in Raoden’s shining hair and the other clutching at Hrathen’s thigh, her breath taken away from her, all of it utterly gone.

He curled between them, after, exhausted, and Raoden stroked Aons over Sarene’s skin in the afterglow, while she traced the scars that peppered Hrathen’s body.

Hrathen said nothing, for a long time, clearly thinking, even while she and Raoden held quiet conversation. They let him have his peace, until he was ready to speak.

“You love me,” Hrathen whispered, when the room had grown even darker, muffled it into the sweat-damp skin of Sarene’s shoulder, even while Raoden huffed with amusement into the back of his neck. “You love me.” It wasn’t a question, and she laced her fingers with his.

“Is everyone in Fjorden as dense as stone, Hrathen, or just you? After all this time sparring, I thought you would figure it out sooner.” He made a broken noise in return, and somehow wiggled to get an arm around both her and Raoden, held them tightly to him. 

Hrathen cried into their mingled hair, and Raoden whispered murmured promises into his ear while Sarene stroked his back, his right arm—beautiful, in its own way—wrapped around her waist, and wished she could know what all Fjordell had done to this man, too good for what they had made him into, so that she might have been able to find Wyrn and do the same to him twice, thrice more.

 

 

Little changed.

Raoden was King. Sarene was Queen. Hrathen was Spymaster. King and Queen shared bedchambers, Spymaster down the hall.

At night, he snuck into their rooms, feet quiet, and slowly, the old wounds in him began to heal, and the space between Sarene and Raoden that had always felt not-quite suddenly was just right, and she loved her husband, but she loved Hrathen too.

It was enough.

 

 

Some time after, perhaps a year, perhaps three, at some time half-past the utter darkness of beyond midnight, a baby began to wail in the distance, and Sarene groaned into the back of Hrathen’s shoulder, her hands flung about his waist while Raoden snored into the small of her back.

“You get up,” she muttered into his skin, and Hrathen said something _very_ rude in Fjordell in return.

“Not my baby,” the older man managed at last, half-mumbled, and Sarene seriously debated kicking him. “You go.”

“I went last time,” she snapped, although she was so tired there was little heat in it.

“Make Raoden go.”

“You want to try waking him up?” For a moment neither of them said anything, and then Sarene looked down at Raoden, who had responded to the second infant by just learning to sleep like the dead.

Hrathen sighed, the sound of the suffering of the very put-upon, and with a great deal of complaint extricated himself from the warm knot that Sarene and Raoden made in their bed, bending down after he had stood to fix the blankets over Raoden now that he was gone, the King making a quiet noise of protest.

Sarene watched him as he stood, strong profile filled in by moonlight through the windows, and touched his hand, pulled Hrathen back for one more kiss.

“Go back to sleep,” Hrathen murmured against her lips. “It’s your turn with the svrakiss next.”

Sarene laughed, and shoved him the rest of the way out of bed.

 

 

And, well, if a little girl was eventually born to the royal couple with uncharacteristically dark hair and eyes and a thoughtful, serious demeanour, who could prove anything, anyway?


End file.
